Kait Kerrigan (words) and Brian Lowdermilk (music) have been hailed as 'the most important young writers in musical theatre today.? This songbook collects 17 of their works from their shows The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown, Henry and Mudge, The Woman Upstairs, Republic, and Tales from the Bad Years. In addition, the book includes an introduction about the pair and notes about each …

While Robert Burns is celebrated today for his body of poetry the composer of Auld Lang Syne was also the composer or arranger of more than three hundred songs. A Rosebud by My Early Walk is set to the traditional tune The Shepherd’s Wife and it was a favourite of drawing room musicians for many years. According to at least one researcher the ‘rosebud’ was the daughter of a family with w…

The Duo for violin and viola was written in Rio in 1946.Villa-Lobos wrote relatively little in the early years of the Second World War. However in the happier years from 1944 to 1946 he wrote this duo a string trio and three quartets not to mention two symphonies an opera a piano concerto and a host of less foraml works of every kind. The duo was given its first performance in New York during …

Par BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN. The St. John Passion was first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday of 1724. Written three years before the St. Matthew Passion, it was a work Bach revised during the rest of his life, in fact he did not leave us a definitive version either in print or fair copy. The sources give evidence of four different versions used at four performances - 1724, 1725, around 1730 and d…

Par STRANZ ULRICH. For many years the manuscript of 'Déjà vu' slumbered in the music library of oboist Hansjörg Schellenberger (former solo oboist of the Berlin Philharmonic) before it was rediscovered last year. Ulrich Stranz composed this solo work for Oboe d'amore, the alto instrument in the oboe family, at the end of his student years in 1974 as the nucleus of his later identically named conce…

As a continuation of the new Urtext edition of the Schubert lieder, Walther Dürr has now edited volume five for high, medium and low voices. Volumes 1 to 4 of this edition contain mainly lieder which Schubert himself saw into print (in his own choice and order) and in the fourth volume works from the last two years of his life are included. The lieder in volume 5 onwards are strictly presented in …

Par SIBELIUS JEAN. Five multi-movement trios for piano and two string instruments by Sibelius are known from the years 1883?1888. The ?large? trios, such as the Havträsk and Korpo Trio (JS 207, JS 209), were written for the classical piano trio scoring of violin, violoncello and piano. Apparently, Sibelius kept composing trios to play among his family and friends, having in mind to be one of the m…

Par FAURE GABRIEL. Gabriel Faure 's Nocturnes, nos. 1-8. Gabriel Faure was born in Pamiers (Ariège) on 12 May 1845. Owing to his precocious musical gifts, he was able, at the age of nine, to enter the celebrated Niedermeyer School, founded in Paris to train organists and choirmasters. For about ten years he received instruction of great quality, centred mainly on the study of sacred music and the …

Passionskantate. Par HOMILIUS GOTTFRIED AUGUST. He was without argument our greatest church composer, wrote the lexicographer E. L. Gerber a few years after Homilius's death in 1785. As a result of the destruction of the Kreuzkirche during the Seven Years War, the longtime Kreuzkantor, a pupil of Bach, performed his professional musical duties primarily at the Frauenkirche in Dresden. The Passions…